16 Crazy Facts You Just Have To Accept To Enjoy The X-Men Franchise

3. Days Of Future Past Is Basically A Reboot (And Totally Works)

After X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine angered any self-respecting X-Men fan, something drastic had to be done for the next main, present-day entry into the series. Following the success of First Class, it was deemed (quite rightly) that the smart option was to combine the prequel world with the current world, by adapting the massively-acclaimed Days of Future Past comic arc. A returning Bryan Singer didn't just opt for a straight movie take on the comic, though: he and writer Simon Kinberg rather ingeniously opted to use the time travel gimmick to essentially give the series a soft reboot, pressing the reset button on anything about Ratner's movie in particular that they didn't like. The movie ends, of course, with a happily-ever-after climax, cancelling out Cyclops and Jean Grey's disappointing deaths, and doing so in a way that mostly makes narrative sense, which given the host of screw-ups Singer had to course-correct, is no mean feat. Most of the times audiences hear "we're doing a reboot", they groan, but in not lingering on the word and just doing what was best for the franchise, Singer totally got away with it against the odds, hopefully reclaiming his baby for good.